I'm Rosemary Willatt, a PhD student at the NCEO Centre for Polar and Modelling at UCL.
I will be on Arctic sea ice with two UCL colleagues Seymour Laxon and Katharine Giles and other international scientists on CryoVEx 2011.
Why? The satellite CryoSat-2 was launched to measure sea ice thickness. To understand the measurements it makes from space we need to go out into the field. We'll look at how variable the snow and ice are, and whether CryoSat-2 can see through snow of different types.

Monday, 11 April 2011

We're now at Alert military base, the northernmost settlement in the world. We'll stay here for nine days whilst we complete our fieldwork.

We came by twin otter aircraft on April 10th, with pilot Troy, co-pilot Derek and engineer Ian. Here are Katharine (in front) and Seymour walking over the airfield to board.